I got up way early, hoping to finish Chernevog edits…went to a site I’ve been to a million times before…and found out the hard way that Avast Antivirus does nothing for spyware. Don’t know how I’ve avoided them for twenty years, but I got zapped good this morning with a nasty little thing call Win7 Security 2012. It grabs hold of your computer and every time you try to open an exe file (like, oh, Windows Explorer?) it gives you a popup you can’t get past telling you you’ve tried to open an infected file and you can’t get rid of it unless you buy this product by clicking on a button which will, of course, install all kinds of icky stuff on your computer.
I didn’t fall for it. Immediately shut my wireless off and went to another computer to figure out what had hit me. But I admit, I’m not the smartest at figuring out which help sites are legit and I was fighting a sick migraine to boot. Fortunately, I’ve got a buddy at on East Coast time by the name of Lynn Abbey who helps folks who like to visit gambling sites get rid of stuff like this all the time, so I called her whining for help.
She had ideas, but first she had her own fires to put out. So…I investigated a bit more, then decided maybe I’d just wait for her advice, took some Excedrine for the migraine, and resurrected my little Dell to continue working on Chernevog. By this time Carolyn was up. She commiserated while having her coffee and brushing Seishi, offered to help, but there really wasn’t much she could do. She’s as dumb as I am about judging the quality of help sites on the internet. Besides, she shortly thereafter was on the phone with NewYork sorting out the copy edit disaster.
The problem of course is that the same type of people who enjoy zapping you are going to get their giggles giving you just the wrong advice for getting rid of these pesky things, and I really wasn’t in the mood to wade through all the bad advice and commercials for anti-spyware stuff looking for somebody I trusted.
Lynn came through with, as it turned out, excellent instructions for getting rid of this thing from here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/ remove-win-7-security-2012 that involved downloading several files (on a different computer and putting them on a flashdrive) and (somehow) opening them on the infected computer. Evidently it doesn’t always stop you from getting into WindowsExplorer, but I was lucky. I finally managed to open it by right clicking and opening as administrator from…I think it was the start menu, ultimately. Each time I managed it, if I had to do it again, the route had been hacked so I had to find a different option.
It was…interesting.
Finally, with only a couple of restarts of the scan thanks to Sooper Shu’s “help”, I have finally managed to get this buzzard off my computer (have you any idea how long it takes to scan these big disks!)….while working my way through a couple of knotty problems in Chernevog. The book’s not finished (hopefully tomorrow) but I’ve got ComCast’s version of Norton on my computer, (thought they still had Macaffee, which had given me lots of problems) sorted out the disappearing LastPass logins, and have a nice couple of new weapons in my arsenal which hopefully I’ll never have to use again.
OTOH, I’ve decided setting myself deadlines is a surefire way to court at least a week of disaster. So…the updated site is coming…when it comes, complete with Lynn’s Time books, more Rusalka, and maybe even a couple of shorts from yours truly…tho I’m making no promises.
Meantime…a teaser: CC’s new splash page:
